He has Cast Down the Mighty from Their Thrones
The Heresy of Christian Zionism
Cross-posted from Freedom Road.
What does Donald Trump’s proclamation about the U.S. “owning” Gaza have to do with Christian Zionism? Here’s what.
Dr. Mitri Raheb, Palestinian Christian Theologian and President of Dar Al Kalima University on the West Bank, called the world’s top scholars focused on Christian Zionism and dozens of global influencers to Amman, Jordan in late January to discuss the impact of Christian Zionism on Christians in the Middle East. Sixty renowned Christian theologians, ethicists, cartographers, economists, political scientists, pastors and social influencers spent four days on the banks of The Dead Sea, near the site where Jesus was baptized, presenting Christian Zionism and its impacts as they see them.
A rudimentary version of Christian Zionism was seeded into my early evangelical discipleship. I sang Larry Norman’s 1969 song, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” at full voice with my youth group. I watched the 1972 cult classic Christian horror film A Thief in the Night with the same youth group, then came home and never looked at my father’s electric razor sitting on the bathroom sink the same again. And of course, I devoured the Frank Perretti book series, This Present Darkness (1986) and Piercing the Darkness (1989). It absolutely shaped my understanding of the supernatural holy war being waged in the heavenly realms. All these influences seeded a terrifying belief-system with Jesus’s second coming at its center—a revelatory and brutal return characterized by vengeful torture and death to those who did not bow the knee to Jesus when they had the chance. Never mind that Jesus’s own proclamation of his ethics, The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), runs diametrically opposed to the Zionist warlord of fantasy fiction’s Christendom. Blessed are the meek, and Blessed are the peacemakers, and Blessed are the persecuted, after all.
In this stream of Christian Zionism, the return of all Jews to Israel precedes the second coming of warlord Jesus. According to the story, every Jew will eventually bow to Jesus, acknowledging him as Messiah. Those who continue to refuse will be cast to hell—aka executed—while Evangelicals and/or Pentecostals (depending on who is telling the story) reign with Jesus in his kingdom for the next 1000 years.
So, here are five things I learned about Christian Zionism from the intellectual feast of our four days on the Dead Sea:
Christian Zionism is a 400-year-old Western European project. Dr. Robert Smith places its origins in 1646 Europe—not the 33 AD mouth of Jesus, nor in the biblical texts. Christian Zionism is fundamentally a political ideology, not a religious belief; designed to empower and justify colonial and imperial conquest. Think: Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny, and the creation of the modern State of Israel. They all come from the same source—Christian Zionist belief systems.
The story of Christian Zionism is the pervasive myth taught explicitly and implicitly in Evangelical, Historic Protestant, and Catholic churches across the globe. Evangelical New Testament scholar, Dr. Gary Burge, explained Christian Zionism is a political mythology, not a religious belief system. Dr. Timo R. Stewart (Finland), explained the ways the political myth had been protected and entrenched by “gatekeepers of knowledge” who, he demonstrated, had erased whole people groups and geographic regions from maps when their presence didn’t serve the Zionist myth. Thus, in the end, the Christian Zionist story has largely gone unquestioned and unchallenged within most of the Christian church.
Christian Zionism is heresy. Dr. Munther Isaac reminded us that Jesus tells us we will know a tree by its fruit. The fruit of Christian Zionism has been genocide, ethnic cleansing, slavocracy, and crimes against humanity. The ideology denigrates the scripture by proof-texting portions and ignoring others to justify all manner of evil. Ultimately, Christian Zionism erases or twists the Genesis 1 doctrine of the Image of God.
Christian Zionism is an ideology of control—at war with God for Supremacy. In my presentation, I proposed that Christian Zionism seeks to control God; holding God to a western view of the world and controlling God’s image for the exclusive benefit of western interests. Christian Zionism, therefore, represents a direct attack upon the supremacy of God on earth. For the ancients, the image of the sovereign served as a marker of where the sovereign ruled. The health and abundance of the sovereign’s image on coins or statues indicated the health of the kingdom. Shattered or toppled images of the king indicated a challenge to the king’s sovereignty. In like manner, the image of God in all humanity is meant to serve as a marker of where God rules in Genesis chapter one. I posed this question for the group’s consideration: What if God interprets governance that crushes, binds, or erases God’s image from earth—through genocide, ethnic cleansing, famine, and other crimes against humanity—as a declaration of war against God’s kingdom on earth?
Christian Zionism is not only white supremacist. It also dominates women. Aja Martinez and Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon presented separately on the various ways Zionist ideologies lead to particular challenges for women oppressed under its rule. It has led to the justification of rape as a weapon of war, as well as the daily subjugation of women under its rule.
I concluded my presentation with a Womanist reflection on Mary’s Magnificat. This young brown girl gave birth to Jesus in the shadow of supremacist Roman imperial rule. Rome had pushed itself to the center of its story. Mary and her people were simply objects in Rome’s story. Today we look to Gaza and the West Bank, and find Palestinian people living on the same land where Mary walked then. They are considered mere objects in Netanyahu’s (and now Trump’s) story. They can be moved, erased, crushed, displaced—all for the sake of the subject, Israel’s or the U.S.’s interest.
But in the first chapter of Luke’s gospel, Mary engaged in a womanist practice—Radical Subjectivity. She sang herself to the center of her own story! She proclaimed to time immemorial: He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. She proclaimed God saw her and called her favored—though Rome called her an object. She proclaimed God was committed to her flourishing in the face of Roman exploitation.
So, it has been one week since I returned from Jordan. In that time, the world has born witness to the objectification of Black people, Poor people, Venezuelan people, children, seniors, veterans, and the Palestinian people. You want to know what Donald Trump’s declaration about Gaza has to do with Christian Zionism? Here it is:the White male rulers of the U.S.—largely evangelical—have effectively furthered the Christian Zionist myth on Palestinian soil, asserting their manifest destiny to rule over holy land.
But, I am heartened today. I am remembering Mary’s faith. In the face of Caesar’s despotic rule, Brown Mary said: God is God. You are not. I say the same: God is God. And God will not be mocked.
President and founder of FreedomRoad.us, Lisa Sharon Harper is a writer, podcaster and public theologian. Lisa is author of critically acclaimed book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family And The World—And How To Repair It All.
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